September 11, 2014, Solano Portela Neto: An Unknown Side of Jonathan Edwards: A Christian Worldview Applied by WRF Board Member Solano Portela Neto This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is well-known as a North American theological expositor, and has been studied exhaustively around the world, especially in Yale University. This prestigious educational institution has a specific Study Center with his name, which has affiliates in various countries around the world, including Brazil.[1] There is, however, a little-known side to Edwards – that in which he reveals himself to be an example of appreciation of nature, science and God the Creator. Edwards is someone who, in his practical life, understood the meaning of what is a Christian worldview. Researchers in Princeton University point out that recent studies have emphasized how Edwards based the accomplishments of his life on the concepts of beauty, harmony and ethical fittingness.  In the opinion of these researchers, the Enlightenment was essential to the formation of his convictions.[2] But, in light of who he was and what he produced, it would be much more correct to credit these aspects to his profound knowledge of history and literature and to a comprehension of the presence and sovereignty of God in history and in nature.

Jonathan Edwards’ Christian roots, and the stimulation of his prodigious mind began in his home. Timothy Edwards, his father, was a pastor in a frontier village in Connecticut and was his first mentor. His mother apparently was a woman of recognized intelligence and he and all of his ten siblings (he was the fifth) received an excellent education at home. Born in 1703, Edwards revealed his precociousness initiating his studies in Yale College before he completed 13 years. He received his Bachelor’s degree when he was 17 and, three years later, in 1723, he had already completed his Master’s. At age 21, he was granted a position as Senior Tutor at Yale. Edwards preached since he was 19, when he spent six months in a Scottish Presbyterian church in New York. He was 24 when he was ordained pastor of the church in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he stayed for 23 years. That same year, he married Sarah Pierrepont, and their thirty years of married life legated 12 children.

Edwards was a gifted thinker, scholar and pastor, a powerful preacher and a missionary to the Indians. Besides his relationship with Yale (student, professor and husband of the founder’s daughter), he was invited to preside the College of New Jersey (currently Princeton University) several months before his death on March 22, 1758. It was a position that he held for only one month. He fell ill to smallpox and quickly died, at only 54 years of age.[3]

Much has been written about Jonathan Edwards, mainly about his theology, his pastoral activities and his sermons, all in the best tradition of the great Puritans.  But many renowned historians such as George Marsden, Perry Miller and Edmund Morgan, also consider him to be one of the finest North American intellectuals.[4] Marsden indicates that many scholars in Europe, both theologians and scientists, found themselves impelled by science to adopt deism, but Jonathan Edwards saw evidence of God’s marvelous design in nature and moved around in it with great competence. He frequently sought refuge in the forest in order to meditate and worship. He calls attention to the way he approaches nature with such tranquility and makes the transition from physics to metaphysics, showing the connection that exists between all the areas of knowledge, in his life and writings, because everything flows from God the Creator. 

This tendency and interest are present, especially, in his early writings, when Edwards was still considerably younger – an adolescent. In one of his essays, Edwards wrote about insects.[5] He indicates that he approaches what he calls “these wondrous animals,” at the instigation of his father. The content is in the form of a letter to an unidentified person and what is amazing is not only the precision or the analytical and perspicuous perspective of his observations, but his age, for he was at that time, 11 years old! Interspersed with drawings and diagrams, Edwards describes the activities of spiders and their webs. We find uncommon perceptions for a youth of his age, and incredible scientific precision. He, for example, writes: “... that what swims and ascends in the air is lighter than the air, as that what ascends and swims in water is lighter than water…” He continues, indicating that the web that supports the spider “…shall be so great as more than to counterbalance the [force of] gravity of the spider.”  

Edwards further details how the webs are woven and how spiders move, drawing and diagraming points “a,” “b,” “c,” etc., to illustrate his observations on the web-weaving work of arachnids. Describing a specific situation of the fauna and flora of his region, in this context, he expresses admiration as to how the spiders manage to build webs that extend to connect trees that are separate, using the force of the wind and making the connection with the thread that they put out. As he concludes the description of this process for the letter’s recipient, Edwards writes: “And this, Sir, is the way of spiders going from one tree to another, at a great distance; and this is the way of their flying in the air.”

This interest in nature was, certainly, constructed on top of his belief and convictions about the Creator of all things and about the systematization of the universe, recorded for us in Psalm 19:2-4: “Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun…”            It is exactly this systematization and repetition of processes (which we call the laws of physics, chemistry, etc.) that makes it possible for us to “do science,” and Edwards worked on top of these presuppositions.

Some years later, in four detailed essays, in which he makes observations on the rainbow and on colors (as well as on the soul and on the essence of being),[6] Edwards also complements his text with elaborate drawings and diagrams on reflection and refraction, revealing profound and precise of the principles of physics in the field of optics.[7] It’s true that we here have an older and more experienced Jonathan Edwards, now 13 years old!

With regards to the rainbow, he explains how the convex surface of the drops produces refraction and variety in the colors. Explaining the colors of objects, he correctly attributes them to the ability of reflecting the proper “rays”[8] and that if they were all reflected “the body would be white”. Speaking about colors and their perception in nature, Edwards explains that “... the blue of mountains at a distance is not made by any rays reflected from the mountains but from the air and vapors that is between us and them.”   

Also in these four essays, making the transition to ontology (the science ofbeing), Edwards offers a complex argument against nihilism.[9] Against those who affirm that we are not dealing with realities but only with appearances, but also against those who, affirming the reality of being, deny the existence of the Sovereign Being.[10] After developing various basic points, he demonstrates an excellent apologetic technique, when he writes:

So that we see that it is necessary that some being should eternally be and tis a more palpable contradiction to say that there must be being somewhere [visible] and not otherwhere [invisible] for the words absolute nothing, and where, contradict each other; and besides it gives as great a shock to the mind to think of pure nothing being in any one place... so that we see this necessary eternal being must be infinite and omnipresent.

Further on, still in this essay, Edwards speaks of the “globe of earth” as subsisting “in this created universe.” Certainly his concept of God, as the foundation of all thought and sustainer of Creation, was already the highest possible, even at an age in which he was still acquiring maturity and developing his thoughts.

Once he graduated, while working on his Master’s studies, but still only 19 years old, Jonathan Edwards wrote texts about the mind.[11] Written in the form of propositions or syllogisms, he deals with “causes”, “existence”, “substance”, “space”, and other similar themes with a philosophical approach. While dealing with the “space” issue, he wrote:

... the secret lies here: That, which truly is the substance of all bodies, is the infinitely exact, and precise, and perfectly stable idea, in God’s mind, together with his stable will, that the same shall gradually be communicated to us, and to other minds, according to certain fixed and exact established methods, and laws: or in somewhat different language, the infinitely exact and precise divine idea, together with an answerable, perfectly exact, precise and stable will, with respect to correspondent communication to created minds, and effects on their minds.

When we approach these writings and this almost unknown side of Jonathan Edwards, in his first years of intellectual productivity, we can appreciate at least two major aspects of this giant for God: First, we perceive Edwards’ precocious mind and production, resulting in phenomenal essays on his observations of nature, still as an adolescent. We see how we so often underestimate and infantilize our youth, believing that we can place little into, or extract little from, their minds. Obviously, not all are geniuses; nevertheless, we should give more value to our youth and believe in their academic potential. Secondly, we highlight the natural way in which he approaches creation and how he interweaves the different areas of knowledge with the fundamentals of the Christian faith and with a perception of a universe that proceeds from a Sovereign God who is creator and redeemer.  To possess and to express this Christian worldview is precisely the objective of Christian school education. This approach was much present in the beginnings of North American civilization, including in the institutions in which Edwards worked. Currently, it is the object of renewed interest, not only in that country, but also in Brazil, leading to the great advances that God has allowed to take place. Our prayer and desire is that He may produce many new Jonathan Edwards, in all the fields of knowledge.  

[1] In 2012, Yale University made an agreement with the Andrew Jumper Postgraduate Center, supported by the Mackenzie Presbyterian University (São Paulo, Brazil), to set up a Jonathan Edwards Study Center in Brazil. Several Brazilian researchers are already involved in this project.

[2]Smith, John E., Lee, Sang Hyun, ed., The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 34-41.

[3] Winslow, Ola Elizabeth, Ed. Jonathan Edwards: Basic Writings (New York: New American Library – Signet, 1966), i.

[4] Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 498-505.

[5] Dwight, S. B., Ed. The Works of President Edwards, Vol. I (New York: Converse, 1829), 23-28.

[6] Smith, E. C. Ed. “Some Earlier Writings of Jonathan Edwards, A.D. 1714-1726”,inProceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (1895), X, 237-247.

[7] It is believed that Jonathan Edwards was familiar with (and had read) Isaac Newton’s Opticks, written in 1704. It is important to stress the connection between Newton and the Christian faith. He was a faithful believer in the Anglican Church, almost ordained to the ministry, and was always a defender of an orderly universe that proceeds from God, the Sovereign Creator. This conviction was the basis of his scientific development and of his very important contribution to science, especially in the field of physics. In all probability, Jonathan Edwards received intense positive influence from Newton’s writings.

[8] No wave length concept is present at that time.

[9] In Edwardian term: nothingness.

[10]“So that we see that it is necessary some being should Eternally be... So that we see this necessary eternall (sic) being must be infinite and Omnipresent”

[11] Dwight, S. B., Ed. The Works of President Edwards, Vol. I (New York: Converse, 1829), Appendix, 668-676.